Lafayette Post 11 reaches Legion regional final

Lafayette Post 11 earned a trip to the American Legion District 2 tournament championship game by hanging on for a dramatic 12-9 victory defending champion Crawfordsville Post 72 at Loeb Stadium Friday night.

Post 11 will now get a second shot at Remington Post 280 at noon Saturday. Remington, the lone undefeated team left in the tournament, beat Lafayette 12-4 on Thursday.

Sparked by a five-run fifth inning, Post 11 had what seemed to be a commanding 11-4 lead going into the eighth inning, but Crawfordsville’s bats started to get hot against Post 11 starter Nate Wiercioch. Mitch Rice’s two-run double sparked a four-run eighth inning to get Post 72 within 11-9.

Lafayette picked up a run in the bottom of the inning when Evan Sturgeon scored on a Trystan Nice sacrifice fly to right after walking and moving to third on Nick Torres’ single.

In the top of the ninth, Crawfordsville’s first three batters, Mitch Dehne, Cole Snyder and Devin Miller, loaded the bases on two singles and an error against reliever Alec Argo.

Post 11 manager Dan Yeoman called in Rossville junior-to-be Christian Howard to get Lafayette out of the jam against Crawfordsville’s top three hitters, who had six hits and six RBIs between them for the game.

“Man, my heart was pumping,” Howard said. “I’ve pitched in high school games, but it was nothing like this kind of pressure. Those were all older kids and the heart of their lineup and they all had been hitting the ball hard tonight.”

Howard, though, got Rice to pop up to short and then struck out Jordan Jackson and Chase Mahoy to end the game without surrendering a run.

“(Rice and Jackson) especially had been pounding the ball,” Howard said. “It felt great to get those guys out and get the W. We’re not done with the tournament yet. I want to keep it going.”

It was a solid bounce-back game for Post 11, which could not get much offense going against Remington Post 280 on Thursday.

“We were on a good winning streak at one point before the tournament,” said Alec Beaver, who went 3-for-5 with three RBIs. “I think we carried that over to this tournament and we’ve been hitting well. There’s really no pitcher that can shut us down. I think we can beat any team in this tournament and go into (state) and give our best in that one.”

The loss was a stunner for Crawfordsville, which had Remington on the ropes on Wednesday before losing a nail-biter. Post 72’s defense committed seven errors over the course of the game Friday.

“I told our guys that we had to make those routine plays,” Crawfordsville manager Johnathan Pickett said. “I can’t coach errors. I told them if we make the routine plays, I can coach you. I think we did a good job on offense executing at the plate. It comes down to errors over two games. If we play clean baseball, we would not have been in the loser’s bracket and in this predicament.”

Post 11’s five-run fifth inning seemed to surprise Crawfordsville and put the momentum solidly in Lafayette’s favor. Helped out by three Post 72 errors, Beaver drove in one run with a single and Josh Kessler plated two more runs with another single. With two other runs scoring on a wild pitch and a throwing error, Lafayette took an 11-4 lead.

“We tried to take it base by base and not get too excited or too down,” Yeoman said. “That is a great club over there. We scored a lot of runs and we’re happy about that.”